Coming up on this episode of Bro, Do You Even Talk Pinball, we're going to review Jaws. Finally, we're doing more reviews. It's been too long. We're also going to talk about Haggis, or the company formerly known as Haggis. We've got a black and white Godzilla, all that and more coming right up. Double Super Jet Pod! I need a ref. I need a room. I watch the parties. I get shit. I need some food. I need to go to school. I got time in my life. That's right. And now, the Hall and Oates of Pinball Podcasting, Nick Lane and Kevin Manning of Buffalo Pinball. Boom shakalaka. Hello and welcome to episode 87. It's number 87 of Brody Even Talk Pinball for Sunday, August 11th, 2024. I'm Kevin. That's Nick. What's going on, Nick? Hey, what's going on, guys? Good to connect. Good to talk some pinball. Let's go. Yeah, it's been too long. We got a lot to cover. Believe it or not, there's pinball stuff to talk about even in the summer. But before we do that, let's get into giving our partners a thanks. Nick, why don't you go ahead and kick it off? Where's my cheat sheet? All right. I'll see it here. Here we go. Starting with our premier partners, Penn Stadium, Penn Stadium Lighting Kit, giving away, usually always giving away lighting kits. We've been giving away over 5,000 of these. But I want to share the Penn Stadium Neo Atoms, which are the low-profile kits that you can get for your pinball machines. They'll light it up. If you're new to pinball, you'll notice that a lot of games are just too dark, especially if you're trying to play in your game room and the lights are off. Pinsidium kits are the solution to that, controlled by iOS, Android. You can make them dim, make them bright. You can change all the colors, and they integrate nicely with your pinball machines. You just keep on code Buffalo and save 10% off those bad boys. And then Flip N Out Pinball, FlippinOutPinball.com, the only place, the only sane place to buy a new pinball machine from. Zach will even sell you used ones as well. I see him doing a lot of that. Best customer service in the industry. If you ever have a problem with a game that you bought from Zach, he will take care of you along with his pal Greg. Can't say enough good things about them. They're the only place I buy a pinball machine from. And then shout out to our other partners and sponsors, Comet Pinball for lighting. We've got Titan Pinball for silicone rings, an awesome mat, tools. They're also doing our giveaway, which we'll talk about after this. PinballLife.com, a new sponsor, PinballLife.com. I've been a customer of them since 2011. Can you believe that? 2011. Just great people over there. Thanks to Scott. Thanks to Terry. They've got a nice little banner hanging up now when you go to Pinball Life that's advertising when Buffalo Pinball is doing their next podcast. So, look, there's a couple choices when you need parts out there. Do Pinball Life a favor and support them because they support this content and make it possible. I've got playfieldprotectors.com. That's playfield-protectors.com. If you've got a classic machine and you want to protect it, you don't want it to wear down to the wood, go to playfield-protectors.com. Even some new machines, heck, they might need it. Check them out. Pinside.com. We love pinside.com. Great source of content these days for us, forums, buying and selling. And then, last but not least, multimorphic.com. They make the P3, and they are leading in innovation in terms of pinball machines. That's my spin on things, but I think it's a good tagline. There you go, guys. They can have it. All right, let's talk a little bit about giveaways. Thank you to Titan Pinball. A lot of you are already entering, but if you haven't yet, use hashtag win in chat for those watching live on Twitch, and that will get you in to enter for a $50 gift card to Titan Pinball. And can I make a recommendation? If you get the $50, just go to titanpinball.com and then click this pin mad button at the top and get yourself one of these Titan pinball pin mats because these are incredible. Best feeling mat by far. I've ever used, you know, people like to get the cheap ones on Amazon and whatever. No, it's worth the money, worth the investment. If you're an old guy like me and you're standing on a concrete floor playing pinball, you need one of those. 100%. I'm not kidding, Kevin, so I've got two of them, thankfully. And whenever I play pinball in my basement, I mean, it's got like a rug technically, but it might as well not be a rug. I always use the mat. Like 10 times out of 10 times I'm using that mat. It's amazing. Exactly. And for those asking, here it is working. We have our entries happening. And don't forget, if you're a subscriber of the channel, you get two times the entries. So go ahead and use your Amazon Prime and then type hashtag win. You'll get two X entries for this month's giveaway. So who can say no to that? All right. Is that it? Can we get the news? Anything else? I think we're good. That's it. We're giving away the $50 gift card, so let's go. All right. Let's let Tim Kisrow lead us in like normal. Here's the tip. It's the latest pinball news. Show hunt. It's on fire. Oh, I have another sound effect to play, too. Nick won't hear this, but those playing at home. Before we get into this, here you go. It's the Prices of Great Losing Horn. Haggis Pinball, rest in peace, we hardly knew you. Who could have possibly seen this coming after their recapitalization email a few months ago? Yeah, they're in liquidation. This comes to us from Pinball News. Australian pinball manufacturer Haggis Pinball has ceased trading and appointed liquidators as the business failed to secure financing to continue its operations. The Melbourne-based company was run entirely and owned by Damien Harden and began in 2018 with a game originally called Ghosts. So, yeah, you remember they did this game, Stealth, which they sold a few of. I played it once, and it was whatever. And then they're like, hey, we're going to do remakes of Valley Classic games, which is like, okay. They were taking deposits in April 2021 for this with Fathom, which I guess of all of them, that was the one kind of garnering the highest dollar value, so that makes sense to do a rerun of this game. You know, think of it as the Bally classic version of Medieval Madness when that got a remake. Everybody's like, great, that game is getting really expensive. Makes sense. Let's get the prices down. I can get a brand-new game for a little bit less maybe, and there you go. So they went with that. The concerns began to be raised as production numbers and delivery dates were repeatedly missed with little communication about what was happening. um yeah it everybody remembers like when damien was first kicking this off he's like doing daily updates on social media and over time those those went down uh the the frequency of those went down uh and then before they're even done launching and shipping all of the the fathoms that they had taken money for they're like hey we're gonna do centaur too uh well not centaur to 10 centire also um uh and it's got this dumb topper and there's colors and send us 16 grand because that's how much it's going to be um and you know none of this worked out so basically they're in bankruptcy um somebody saw a truck the day before uh this was all announced like at the building unloading all the assets so that's shady too all of their social media accounts are down, and a bunch of people are out of money. Nick, any thoughts on Haggis taking a dump? You know, I listened to your tone, Kevin, and it's like, oh, we were, like, celebrating this, but it's like, no, we've warned people forever, and Kevin and I are salty veterans who have seen this movie many a time. You know, one thing I forgot, Kevin, and I was going to, this is my bad, I was going to see if you can run a poll in the chat to see who is listening right now that has gotten into pinball in the last four years. So 2020 or, you know, 21, 22, 23, right? Like, I am curious. So just out of chat, is there anybody that got into pinball in the last four years in this hobby? Like, you know, paying attention to pinball media, buying games, competing in tournaments, that kind of thing. Because there are a lot of people that have just gotten into pinball, and I think they've missed some of the scammy BS, pinball is hard. They might not be aware of that, and they get optimistic about seeing these companies, and they're like, oh, Nick and Kevin are dunking on these companies or they're bitter or whatever. It's like, no, we've seen this time and time again that it is very predictable and easy for us to predict at this point, and you guys will as well. and what we try to do is just save you from any pain or suffering by saying, geez, you might want to be careful with your money here, right? Like this pinball is hard. You've seen this before. Don't want anybody to be taking or lose money on this. So that's the attitude. I think it's kind of just a little preamble in this. Now let's go back to dunking. All right. The other thing that came, like somebody found that there's this other company, Heart's Co. Oops, wrong one. This one. Heart's Co. So this is Damien from Haggis, and there's this other company. Heart's Co. Professional Services Consulting. Who we are, experienced technology and management consultants crafting innovative solutions for clients worldwide. If you guys need a primer on business jargon, this is a great website to kind of bring you back up to speed. If you're like, oh, I need to brush up on my business jargon. They've got all of it here for you. They're the premier professional services company dedicated to delivering excellence across a multitude of disciplines. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So here's what it says about Damien, the founder, also the guy that ran Haggis. He says, harnessing his extensive 30-year track record in corporate technology across diverse sectors, Damien is primed to bring out the best in your project, adopting a holistic approach that prioritizes both innovation and sustainability. I mean, it didn't really work out for Haggis, but he's definitely going to make it happen for your business. So what could go wrong working with these guys? So I don't know. I don't know what to think about all this, how to connect all these dots. It just goes back to that, the line we go back to, buy pinball machines that exist. if it's in a box and ready to go and you've played it and you like it then buy it these pre-orders and from especially from new startup companies it's just so super risky that um you know it's gotten to the point where like we can't even feel sorry for the people who continually put money into these companies it's like okay you should yes the company should fulfill their promises and deliver a product if they promise, but you also need to take care of yourself and be mindful of these things and look into the track records of these companies and see kind of what the, what the, over time, anytime these new startup companies come out, there's probably a chance that you're not going to get your money back. Some people are fine taking that loss on the risk of like, oh, it's really valuable to me to have something that nobody else has, right? I I really value that, and I'm willing to take the risk of my money to potentially get this thing that not many other people will have. And maybe it will be one of the lucky ones that actually gets a game or not. So proceed with caution would be my advice. Make any advice to, like, future. There's going to be more startups like this, right? We'll see more die. Yeah. What are your thoughts about it or advice going forward? Yeah, just some reflection and comments on that. First of all, it's nice to see a lot of new people who got into the last four years. So I'm glad you guys found our channel. Hopefully you're being entertained and informed. Good to have you here. And to your comment, Kevin, it's like, look, I admire anybody that goes out there and starts a business and is an entrepreneur. We need people to do that. And you're going to fail. Like failure is part of being an entrepreneur and starting things up. And to Haggis' credit, like they were legit in the sense that they made a number of machines. They made Kelts or Celts or whatever. and then they did ship Fathoms. So they're not like a scammy company per se, but they were at the end taking money in kind of like a Ponzi scheme fashion because it wasn't working out, and they're taking money to fund other things, and that's where you kind of really drop the hammer on them. So, you know, it's a mixed bag with this, but, you know, we always come down to pinball. Manufacturing pinball is very difficult, very, very difficult. Well, startups are more than likely to fail. The ones that succeed are the exception, not the rule. As much as we're difficult on Spooky a lot of times and there are quality issues, and the games they make are not for me in terms of kind of the – I'm not going to get into that road, but I always respected that Charlie was able to build a pinball business that is still going today, right? So he's done it. And kudos to him and his family and everybody else over there. But, like, folks like Haggis and you see Turner trying to do it, like, we're just highly skeptical, right? Like, it's just how do you compete in this business with Stern and Jersey Jack? And they struggle as well, right? Like, they struggle to get things right. It's hard for them. How the hell hard do they think it's going to be for you? So, yes, we need more companies to always come in and push the limits, and it's good for consumers. But as the conclusion that we always say, don't buy a pinball machine that doesn't exist. Don't ever do that, period. Yeah, a couple good items of feedback in chat. So somebody, I just saw it. Mr. Mike Mann says, what about Barrels of Fun, new company taking pre-orders? And to that I would say that's a big part of why I haven't, like that game looks interesting. I've played it a bunch. But there's so many questions with the new pinball company that, you know, we've credited them for kind of doing it the right way, right? Like, they came out with a license that appealed to people. The game was done, completed, in the box, shipping. Not all of them. They did have some ready to go. But then they had to take pre-orders, which, you know, I understand, like, you need to get the capital to build up the rest of the games, but at least they took that initial investment and kind of did it, quote, unquote, the right way where they had the game developed, then they launched it, and then, you know, took the pre-orders. But I personally, with a new pinball company, I'm not willing to take that risk. I would much rather, if it ends up being a good game, and especially in the market that we're in right now, if it ends up being a good game, I'll buy them on secondhand. There's going to be plenty of them. The prices aren't crazy like they were during COVID where, oh, if I don't get it now, it's going to be $5,000 more. No, chances are it's going to be less than what it was new in box or about the same. So, and then you also get the benefits of, you know, the person who bought it before you probably fixed anything that was wrong with it. I think our friend in Rochester, he bought one and then he had to take it all apart and, like, dial in all the shots and stuff. It feels great now. Like, I would love to own that one compared to the one I played at Pemberg, which was a little more clunky. And that one was set up super tough. We'll talk about that later. But, yeah, there's a lot to take into consideration when you're buying a pinball machine from a brand-new company like that. Yeah, I think that's really the only one I wanted to – yeah, buyer beware. What's-it-those sums it up nicely. Yeah, so more to come on that. I've been in the thread. I'm pinzied. I'm like, it's just people yelling at each other and pointing fingers and the blame at each other. I don't really care to dig deep into the finances of a company or anything like that. But if big news comes out in the future, we'll report on it. But, you know, just be careful, everybody. Be careful. Okay? All right. Let's talk about a pinball machine that does exist from a company that has proven they can make games. It's Godzilla, but, you know, there's some questions about their strategy with this, too. But it's Godzilla's 70th anniversary. so everybody loves Godzilla they sold a ton of them Stern's like what the heck let's go out and make another version of this even though everybody got up in arms with you know they redid Jurassic Park with a special edition but that was an LE but this one's only a premium so somehow it's okay but if you buy all this stuff that would get you to a LE level it's going to be at about the same price it's weird but they're doing a 70th anniversary version of the game it's mostly black and white with some red and the art reminds me of like a of Strange or Centaur look but yeah it's $9,700 but they're going to do like a special topper and accessories and things like that the company's promise is to not produce a subsequent limited edition models after the initial release okay so as a result there is no restriction on the number of 70th anniversary machines CERN Pinball can produce. Cabinet and backbox artwork are monochromatic. With just the 70th anniversary logo sporting any colors, it gains a matching red backbox trim and red flipper button. So it's a sharp-looking game, and it's got kind of that foil-looking finish that if you've ever seen the Iron Man Vault Edition has on it. It looks really cool. I haven't seen this one in person yet. I personally, like, I love my Godzilla, and I like the color. I don't see the need to upgrade, but I'm sure there are some folks who really like this and will go ahead and upgrade. But, I don't know. Nick, any thoughts on Godzilla 70th? Yeah, I mean, it's the number one rated game on Pinside. It's not the number one game to me, but it's certainly a good game and sold well. I'm wondering, because it did sell so well and there's so many out there, who had been on the fence and doesn't own the game that would be picking it up now? I'm not sure, right? So, you know, Stern can sell it good on them. I mean, I want to see Stern be profitable. I want to see them make money. And if they're fulfilling a market need, then great. I'd be interested to see it in person, how it looks. Like, I'm not somebody who I can kind of care less about it. I don't like the art to begin with on the game. So, you know, switching it to black and white, I don't know if that changes my opinion whatsoever. It's a way too busy game. But, yeah, you know, not totally surprised. If it makes people happy and they grab it, then good on Stern and good for those customers. Yeah, you do have to wonder, like, they sold so many of these. Like, how many of these are they going to possibly sell? But, you know, even if it's like, you know, I'm sure they factored all that into their business visions. But I do like how they even made, like, the Godzilla figure in the back, black and white. That's pretty cool. It does look really neat. Yeah, look at it. I mean, the pinball market cannot be good right now whatsoever. Prices are crashing on games in a way that we've never seen before, certainly since I've been in the hobby. It's an interesting time. Prices shot way up, and now they're plummeting down. So maybe it's kind of balancing itself out. But Stern's got that huge facility. I imagine that John Wick has been a total disaster for them. So they're probably throwing everything at the wall at this point and need a win. And, you know, there's a lot of people, a lot of staff, a lot of designers to pay. I think that economics are not going to be good again anytime soon. So we'll see how this plays out, man. Yeah, I do think about that factory. It's like, man, it's big and fancy and it looks cool, but to make it worth keeping that place running, they've got to really get some hits on their hands. From what I've played of John Wick, we're going to talk about it more. I don't think that game is going to be keeping the assembly line going for very long. No, and it's funny. There's two challenges in pinball. One is being able to keep on affording to buy new games, right? But then even if you have a lot of money and can kind of constantly buy games, then you've got space as the other issue, right? It's not that I have unlimited money to buy games, but my bigger issue right now as I mature in the hobby is the space issue. So I've got to be really selective about what I buy. I still can't go out and just buy games willy-nilly, so that's that is a challenge people have bought a lot of games in the last few years but it's like Stern kind of I have to wonder did they think the good times were just never going to end right like it seems like they built that facility and built everything up like oh this is normal now this is the way things are going to go it's not going to reset or get back to how it was or even just kind of rebound the opposite direction and get bad so I don't know man it's again an interesting time It's tough to justify the purchase of any pinball machine right now when it takes a big hit, right? Like, you used to buy a game and, I don't know, if you wanted to turn around and sell it. What was normal to me is if you buy a game, you want to turn around and sell it, you might lose like $500, right? Right, yeah. What is not normal, what happened in the last four years, you should buy a game and the game goes up. You can almost sell it for $1,000 or $2,000 more because it couldn't make it fast enough. That was an abnormality, and anybody who didn't realize that at the time, maybe people who came new in the hobby, that is not normal. What is pretty, again, what is pretty normal that I've seen over the last 10 years, you buy a game, you sell it a year or two from now, maybe it's lost like 500 bucks, right? Like it kind of, it's not bad. You don't take a huge hit on it. Now games are losing 1,000, 2,000, 3,000. They're plummeting. Yeah. You know, for me personally, like I can only take that hit so many times on a machine. Like I do okay. Like I have a nice game room full of games, but I don't want to keep losing thousands of dollars on pinball machines, right? It's just crazy. That's why I sold Roadshow a couple months ago, and there have been games that I've looked at, but I'm like, is it even worth buying a used game because it's so hard to sell? Like, if something comes out that I want, that I really want, because in the past I would have, like, bought a game just to, like, have it. Like, I've looked at Star Wars. Like, it'd be cool to have a Star Wars for a while, to play that, really learn it at home, but like how hard is it going to be to sell when I want to sell it? Like if something comes along that I really want, I don't want to have to go through the annoyance of selling this game. Right. Or potentially taking on a big loss on it to move it. Like it's, um, I don't know. So I've just kept my cash and have an open spot down at the end of my, my lineup. So it's definitely affected my purchasing behavior. Yeah. Look at, again, we'll talk about John Wick, but look at John Wick. And, um, you know, I saw that Zach was selling a used one, right? It was probably like 100 plays or something, and he had it down to like $6,100 and still couldn't sell it. I don't know if it eventually sold. I'm trying to look for it now, but that is the market, right? MSRP in that game is like $6,900 for a pro, and within like a month and a half or a month, you can get that for $1,000 less, right? Like that's insane. For a brand-new game, yeah, that's great. Just sitting there, yeah, just sitting there. You know, it might as well be in the box still, right? I'm sure it was great quality from him and just couldn't sell it. I was astounded by that. Yeah, it's crazy. All right. Well, that's our pinball market update. In other Stern news, we would be remiss not to announce that Greg Ferreris has retired. So he's a Stern Pinball's art director and famed pinball artist in his own right. Greg Ferreris has announced his retirement. So, like, a little bit of background on Greg. if you don't know who he is, he said he started working in the advertising industry, and then he created many iconic classic Bally games, like so they are packaged on Harlem Globetrotters, Rolling Stones, Fathom, Strange Science, Dr. Dude, Party Zone. He did the Elvira games. He worked with Dutch Pinball and Babe Lebowski, Star Trek Next Generation, No Fear, all sorts of stuff. So legendary artist in the pinball industry, Greg Ferraris. Congratulations to him on his retirement, and thanks for all the great artwork you did. But what I don't know if you saw this, Nick, was how Stern announced it. Did you see this? No, I did not. So Stern printed out this news release saying, Stern Pinball expands our team. I was like, okay, that's cool. Like, let's see who's going on. Greg Ferraris retires. Sebastian Napoli appointed art director. So Stern Pinball Inc. announced the retirement of its long-tenured and iconic pinball artist and art director, Greg Freres. Renowned for his pioneering contribution to the industry, Greg's story career spanned nearly four decades, with his artistic vision leaving an indelible mark on pinball enthusiasts worldwide. Blah, blah, blah. Then it says, under the tutelage of Greg, Stern Pinball announced the appointment of Sebastian Napoli as art director. Okay, cool. So Greg's out. Sebastian's in. Sebastian brings over 15 years of experience in creative design, most recently serving as the creative director for Pop, Skull, and Havas. I don't know what those are, but through his education from the Art Institute, Sebastian will contribute and lead a fresh perspective and energy to help continue creating the most beautiful pinball machines in the world. Okay, so Greg's art, Sebastian's in. Who else is coming on since they're expanding their art department? Oh, nope, that's it. That's not expanding. That is lying. That's just like a straight-up lie in your headline. One person retires. One person steps up. They didn't even say if they replaced the Bastions, so maybe they're actually down a person. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. Whoops. Not a great headline, Stern. Rethink your – how you – I know you want to position things in the most positive light, but you can just say, you know, we have a new art director. We have – appoints a new art director. That's all you need to say. You don't have to say you're expanding your art team if you're not expanding it. Art department? That's right. Bad headline. Bad press release headline. Stern, don't do it again. God, let me just give a recommendation to all pinball manufacturers. You put out a headline like this, okay? Kevin Manning is going to drop the fucking hammer on you. That's right. That's right. Kevin Manning, PR specialist, okay? Yeah. Yeah, you're not going to get away. You thought you were going to get away. You look at what American Pinball does, and it's like, this is like 10 times better than American Pinball. But even Stern is not safe from Kevin Manning's wrath. That's right. Get your shit together, Stern. Get it together. I don't know who's writing these press releases, but you need to get it together. All right. In the multi-morphic world, since our last podcast, I think Jerry sent out two updates. Most recently, it was about the Princess Bride. They're expecting to start shipping modules beginning this month. They said in August their promise was to start shipping in summer. August qualifies as summer, so they're meeting their expectations there. So over the next several days, Multimorphic will begin notifying customers who are in batch one of their production run. Full Princess Bride P3 machines and standalone modules will begin to ship from the company's factory approximately two weeks after customers are notified. So all good there. What else was interesting? So there's a look at the, if you're watching the video, there's a look at the Princess Bride play field for the P3. What else was kind of unexpected was that Zen is also doing their own unique Princess Bride pinball digital game. It's a video game version of Princess Bride pinball. I can't think of any other time when this has happened where a physical machine, that'd be like if, you know, like Stern did Ghostbusters and then Zen's like, hey, we're also doing Ghostbusters. But it's something totally different. So, I don't know. Whoever owns the rights to the Princess Bride is just getting that money. Dude, that art, though. Yeah, I know. What the hell? It really makes me appreciate the art package that we're getting on the P3 game. They did, what's his name? Cary Ulyss? Is that how you say it? Yeah. I don't know. They did hit dirty. Yeah, they did. I'm not talking about the P. I talking about the Zen The Zen version yeah I mean it looks pretty neat And actually the art on the table itself Well no it looks pretty dang cute I was going to give it the benefit of the doubt but it looks pretty nice Anyway, so thank God for Matt Andrews working on the E3 version. We're happy to have you in our game rooms. I'm glad this is not what the physical machine looks like. Yeah, I know Zen has done, like, a lot of Marvel stuff, but that barely even counts, right? Like, everybody does Marvel stuff and Star Wars, right? Well, I'll be happy in life when Marvel and Star Wars just go away for good. I know they're trying to kill them with the concept they've been putting out. Oh my god, yeah. And me, like, I like Star Wars and it's just been, like, so much. Although, Deadpool and Wolverine is really good. I heard. I'm going to go, I told Martha I want to go to, like, the, I was like, we're going to go to the 4D thing where the fucking shit is and they do smells and shit. Like, we're doing that. We're going over the top, baby. Yeah. We're going to make it happen. There you go. I like it. All right, cool. So let's see. Let's see. You want to talk? Oh, the other thing with Multimorphic is, so back a couple months ago, when they did the quality update kits, where they were like, we're going to step back and evaluate our quality, and we're going to see what needs to be addressed. And they sent out all these free parts updates to everybody. they announced a bunch of additional updates at that time too and one of them was that original P3 owners were going to get the new option to upgrade to the new backbox the one with the marquee under the monitor and I was like I kept going back and forth I was like do I want this do I not I was like screw it I love the P3 I want my P3 to be as nice as it can so I decided I'm going to get it and so that's that finally shipped out Friday I think it was so that's on the way I should have it here according to UPS Tuesday-ish. So I think I'm going to save that project for like a winter project because it looks pretty in-depth. And I also want to play my Princess Bride before I start taking my machine apart. But it'll be cool. I got rid of the whole system core package. So rather than continuing to buy art packages, I'm just going to like throw the system core. It makes it look like, you know, you can see the insides of the machine. It's really, really cool. It's like general generic kind of P3 art. and then I'm just going to stick with that. And then they're going to put out some theme that I really love. They're going to do like Tron Ares, and I'm going to be like, well, shit, I've got to buy all the art package for this now too. That's my plan for now. Actually, if they did a Tron Ares, I'd probably get a collector's edition because I'm crazy like that. Nick, did you hear that Nine Inch Nails is doing the soundtrack for the new Tron movie? Yeah, I'm not optimistic about this new Tron movie considering the shit that Disney's been putting out in the last few years. So they're probably going to ruin Tron like they're ruining everything else. So, sorry. Rest in peace, Tron. I don't know. We'll see. We'll see. Let's make up. What's your bet? Is it going to be good or bad, Kevin? I'm cautiously optimistic. It's going to be total shit. Okay. Time stamp this. Trier's is going to be total shit. Yep. All right. Here we go. There you go. But it's going to have a good soundtrack at least. So there you go. Well, hopefully. But Nine Inch Nails is a good pick, I think. So that's it for multi-morphic updates. All right. Let's talk. John Wick, Nick, what are your impressions after playing John Wick for the first time? Yeah, so in between the last time that we did the podcast, I actually got to lay hands on John Wick. That doesn't sound right. I got to play a zone in Virginia for vacation in July, and I went to Ocelot Brewing, which is a great place, by the way. The games were in excellent condition, very cool pinball spot. Had, like, all the newest games. They actually had a John Wick Pro and Premium. So I know the person who operates the game is on Pinside, so shout out. I think it's like Flinnabus. I could be wrong. I apologize if I'm wrong. But anyways, got to play the game, and here's impressions of actually playing it. Now, the caveat is there was some controversy because when this game was released, we talked a lot about it. So, you know, I said I want to get this game. I didn't say I'm buying the game, by the way. Like, I think I want John Wick to be good, right? It's like wanting a theme to be good, right? Sometimes you get a game that's a theme that you like, and you're like, please be good. Please be good. I want to buy it. Please be good. And, you know, I concluded, like, well, I've got to wait to play it and see where the code is. I got to play it. First of all, this game is a box of lights. Okay, but let's talk about the good. As people are saying, a fast game. Shots are tight, but very findable. It felt really good shooting it the way it was set up on the Pro. Pro was maybe a little steeper. I really liked I really liked the shots and how it felt I think who's the guys who made this? Elliot? Yeah, it was his first game Yeah, I think honestly Elliot you delivered it's a fan layout it's kind of no frills but I thought it was very fun and I like the idea of playing this really fast, flowy game so good job there the pro was set up good The premium was like a little flatter and not as fun when I played it. So it was like night and day between playing the two. I couldn't get a good impression of, you know, what the quote-unquote better version is. But if I were to get this game, big if, right now I think, like most people, heavily leaning towards the pro. It's hard to justify the premium or LE even. And here's why. I mean, who cares about the medallion opening? Who cares about the car shooting out kind of like it swerves out on the premium? an LE, and the pro, it boops the ball back. It doesn't do that on the premium LE. So to me, the car is kind of better on the pro in the way it interacts with the ball. Like that's probably maybe split down the middle on opinion, but I found it better on the pro. I didn't necessarily miss the stand-up target in the dance floor area, and that was actually one of my favorite shots in that game. Like having it come off the – like shooting a ramp, having it come off the flipper fast and trying to stick it in that area was fun. Again, playing the pro and premium, I didn't notice a huge benefit of that pop-up drop target that's not on the pro, but it's on the pro and the premium and LE. I'm sure people feel differently than I do, but it just didn't seem that big of a deal. I think the game has to be set up right so you don't get nasty, cheap drains out of there. So it's really just going to depend on the pitch, and hopefully it's a balanced or even thing. overall like layout wise it was fun to shoot and I kept on going back to playing that pro at Ocelot because I was just having fun just bashing the ball around there now it was hard to hear the sound or call outs in the game but the game just feels absolutely soulless and lifeless at this point from what I could hear and make out I heard that you know people are saying online that right now basically has one music track that's playing when you're not in mode that's repetitious I see that being a problem. Modes, it's hard to figure out what's going on. Again, it's just a soulless, soulless game. When I played it a month ago, that's how it felt, which is unfortunate. So long and short of it, the way I'm thinking about this game right now, maybe I'll pick it up if it just plummets in price. Maybe I'll pick it up use or cheap. I would lean towards the Pro and probably put better speakers in it if I were to get this. I have no idea, but there's no urgency behind owning this game. It's really looking to get with the code. And then maybe the last couple final thoughts, I just don't – I appreciate what they're trying to go for with the neon lighting, but honestly, when you step up with this game in person, it doesn't scream John Wick to me. It screams like – it looks like Batman Forever from 1995 Sega with that green highlighted lighting. It just doesn't work. I think maybe if they picked a different color, like red or purple would have been way better. So I've not seen the fourth John Wick. I don't know why they went with green. Maybe it makes sense. Who knows? The other thing, too, is I like the car on the Pro how it boops the ball back. The problem is when you step up to the game, you can't even see. That car is black. You can't even see it on the game. It's really weird. The one toy in the game, you can't see it. They needed to put like a spotlight or a flash or something or headlights on it, but they didn't. So, man, I don't know. It's like I'm trying to like this game. Again, the best thing about the game right now is certainly the layout. Everything else is really, I don't know. Maybe because of this I'll get it cheap and just settle for kind of a mediocre game that I like to shoot. Yeah, if it's a theme you like and the price is cheap enough, then maybe it's worth grabbing, putting it at the co-op or whatever. But, yeah, I played this a few times. We went out to the launch party at the RPC, mostly because I traveled all around and stopped at a few pinball places and hadn't seen it. So I was like, all right, let's go out and we'll check this out. And, you know, I played it a few times and it just kind of like whatever. Like I didn't feel compelled to continue playing it or I wasn't like this is great or bad. It was just kind of like whatever. I agree that the layout, I think, is the best part of it, even though some of the shots are pretty tough, especially that center ramp where you're trying to lock the balls. I found that to be pretty tricky. But, again, it's one of those things, like, the more you play it, the easier it'll get, right? And that's not necessarily a bad thing. I don't need Steve Ritchie, like, super flow shots all the time. And, actually, at home I kind of prefer the trickier shots, which, you know, on a game like Alien or even, like, the left ramp on Godzilla can be tricky sometimes, and that's cool. It makes it more challenging. So when you get in the kind of flow and you start hitting those shots, it feels really good. But, yeah, I think our package is neat. I'm not a huge John Wick fan, so I wouldn't know the things to critique or not. As you're talking about the green, I was like, was green like a featured thing? Was it like a Blade Runner kind of look and feel where they're in these neon places? I can't even really remember. But, yeah, it's whatever right now as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, again, I do like how it shoots. Like, it's fun to shoot the game. So I'm still up on debate if I'll ever own one. We'll see. We'll see. One more thing I wanted to comment on this game. Oh, I do find it weird how – It's like sometimes Stern can't win, but, like, they were highlighting that it's got, like, 40 minutes of 4K footage, which is so weird. And it's like, yeah, but it's like, oh, and, you know, if you shoot this shot and there's two enemies, the screen will show John Wick shooting two enemies. Like, who gives a shit? You guys, like, guys, like, get everything else right first, right? Like, that's, like, so not a big deal. it's kind of hilarious that you're hyping it up when your game is uncoated and unfinished. You should have spent zero time on that at this point because it's so lacking in call-outs, sound effects, rules, etc. When I'm playing the game, that game's going so fast, I never saw the screen at all except when I started a mode. Right? Like, that was it. So who gives a shit of what's on the screen? And nothing brings home the point more than owning Pulp Fiction where I'm like, I don't miss a screen whatsoever on this game because this game is so goddamn polished and good, and the sound effects and everything, how the game presents itself is amazing. The screen is so negligible. Yes, it's nice to have it there, but it should be, like, very low on the bottom of what's going on. And I know people lost their mind with Jurassic Park not showing clips. I get it. Oh, my God, yeah. Really? that's like after Jurassic Park got good rules, got good layouts, got good toys then you start nitpicking on the smaller things and the smaller things to screen but up front when Cern was debuting this they really spent a lot of time hyping up the fact that he shoots three people when you hit the shot or there's 40 minutes and it's 4K it's like, no no no, that's get the game good I got AI in there or whatever that doesn't shine through at all as you're playing it yep, agreed So here's an example of, like, a pinball machine that exists, but, like, is the code where it needs to be, right? Like, so the other thing is, like, a lot of – and CERN has been much better about it lately, but there's no guarantee that this code is ever going to get better. If they don't sell any of these, like, CERN's not going to put the time and effort into making this a great game unless they, you know, maybe plan on rerunning it down the line. So, again, no guarantees as far as code updates, too. So if you like it as it sits right now, grab it. But don't guarantee – there's no guarantee of updates in the future. Yeah, Stern does pretty good updates, but Kevin's right. There's zero guarantee. And, like, in terms of Tim leading the code on this, like, I've got a number of games where Tim's the coder. Like, okay, there's no guarantee this game is going to be amazing. There really isn't, and there's nothing in the code right now that's remotely interesting to me. So just here's how we're trying to help you guys. Sturm really, I don't understand why they released this game in terms of where it's at right now, because it is, in my mind, a year away from being ready for release. It is, I mean, we're several months into the release of this, and maybe in three months they're going to have it as a barely acceptable version of release on code, but it is a year away from seeing what it should be. This is, again, this is like Bond all over again. And people allegedly love Bond now, and they're happy with it, and, you know, I've got my take on that. But it took a long time for Bond to – and Bond's still releasing updates. It took a long time to get there. And it's got to, like, no matter what, this has got to hurt Stern to release a game this bare bones and not selling well. I think of – when I think of this game and distributors who have to go out and buy it and try to sell it, and folks like Zach who's selling it, can't even sell it, used one a month old for $6,100. I mean, I'm looking. There's pros right now calving their home use only for $5,900 on Pinside. I think of, like, that meme with Ben Affleck smoking his cigarette with his head up. Like, that's how you distribute this right now when they see, like, this game come out and no code in it. Yeah. And also one of the worst markets in pinball that I've seen in all my years in the hobby. So, there we go. Maybe a year or two years from now we'll be talking about how amazing the code is and what this game has turned into. But, man, we're a long ways from that right now. Yes, indeed. All right, that's first impressions on John Wick. Nick, you wanted to talk about Stern Insider Connected too, right? Oh, very quick. I wanted to drum up some thought or discussion, and it occurred to me that why doesn't Stern every month, and I think I can speculate why. I can guess why I don't buy this reason, but why don't they do live leaderboards on all their Stern Insider Connected every month and just reset it? I would be playing all my games much more and trying to compete for that. I love how they had one that was verified location and one in home, so it speaks volumes about something that you can do on location. You've got the system. I know you can do the top 100. Why don't you extend it to even 500 so that everybody can find their place on it? You've built this thing. Why do you just do one game or even slowing down and not even do one game a month? Why don't you do all games? I'd almost be tempted to buy more. Do a top 1,000 score. Let people compete. You've got the system. Why aren't you doing it? And my guess and my speculation is like, oh, they want to, like, highlight one game, so they push people to play this one game. Well, okay, sure, but what's the tradeoff? Then you're not driving traffic to the other games? Like, there's people that can't help but chase high scores, right, in a global setting. Unlock that for everybody. Unlock that for every game, and you've got a great platform. Like, when Scorebit, what they were trying to do, Scorebit is going to do a thing where it's, like, one game a month. It's, like, all games that were connected to Scorebit you can always play on. Scorebit had a million other problems, in my opinion. You know, Stern is doing a – I really like Insider Connect. I think they're doing a good job. But unlock all the games. Every month, wipe the scores, especially when you have code updates. That just makes sense. And let people just play around and chase scores every month. Yeah. I mean, it's there. It's probably, like, a resources thing, too. Do they have the staff they need to manage that every month? It can't be that hard. Maybe I'm naive, right? And if somebody has any computer background and can point out a flaw in my logic, by all means, I just want to learn to know. But I can't imagine that it's that hard to do. Right, yeah, because they obviously built the infrastructure for it already because they've done it before, right? It would just be somebody to kind of manage and implement that every month. Well, they have to automatically program the code to wipe the score system over? Yeah, yeah. Like, how hard can that be at all? Yeah. All right. Well, Nick Lane's here for your Insider Connected ideas. Free of charge this time, but, you know, he'll charge a consulting fee in the coming months. But he's available for you. All right. I think that's it for news. I've got a few entries into everybody's favorite segment, Mods You Don't Need. Are we ready? No WTFAP? As we were talking, I was like, there was definitely some WTFAP stuff, but I never put it down. So I'll give them a break. They get a freebie. Summer vacation, folks. Oh, I remember what it was. It was when Dave Fix posted about Barry's O' Barbecue Change. He couldn't even get the name of his own game right. Barry's O' Barbecue Change. Yeah. Well, there you go. Attention to detail, folks. It either says that, like, you don't have the attention to detail or the name of your game is way too complicated to remember what it's actually called. Barrios Barbecue Challenge Hot Rods and Hot Sauce is the actual name. Nope, Hot Sauce and Hot Rods. Hot Sauce comes first. You almost had it, though. We love you, Barrios. All right. Okay. Mods you don't need, number one. so this one I got I have some thoughts on this one this is not a total mods you don't need at first it was but people have convinced me that there is use for the pin steps so if you haven't seen these they are shoes for your pinball machine because we need to mod every single piece of our pinball machines with custom colors and 3D printed things pin steps they so you can get them in certain colors and they say pin steps and they're 3D printed and you put them under the legs of your pinball machines to raise them up for you so you don't have to adjust the light levelers. Okay. Let's see, where's the price on these? $25 each. So if you need four of them, that's $100. bucks. I'm pretty sure that's each. Plus $12 for shipping. Yeah. So I was like, you absolutely do not need these because they make a thing. Like if you have a pinball machine and for some reason you want it really steep, go to our partner pinballlife.com grab yourself the 4 inch leg levelers, put them in the back jack it up don't put anything on the front and you're good to go you know what i mean just have the leg levelers all the way in uh but apparently there are certain situations where these come in handy um because uh so i met i met the guy that does the the pinstuffs at pinberg and he gave me a set and he's like you can review them or whatever and i'm like i'm gonna go with whatever and i'm gonna give them to my friend patrick who uh has a basement with uh and he's got i think he said bram stoker's dracula he can only get up to like a five and a half inch pitch because of the weirdness of his basement. So I'm like, great. You take them. Enjoy them. Let me know how they work out, and we'll go back from there. I'm also a little weary of putting my $10,000 pinball machine on these 3D printed things, you know? Yeah, agreed. You know, I'm not exactly into that, you know? Like, levelers work great. I absolutely don't need them. I have a game room with nice flat floors. No problem. So there was that, and there was also the case of setting up games for tournaments. So if you're on, you have a location where you want to set up your games quickly and make them harder for a tournament, you put them under the back legs. So there's like this little tiny niche of where these make sense, from what people have convinced me that they make sense. For me personally, I would not put my games on these. So, mods you don't need. Nick, any thoughts on pinstaps? Yeah, I mean, when I first saw it, I was like, WTF. But I'm trying to think of a scenario where it works. So, I had a funny thing enough. I had moved some games around my basement, and I put, well, you'll know this, Kevin, Big Buck Hunter pinball where Bad Girls was. And I was really struggling to get that leveled. And I think the – maybe I'm wrong on this, but I think one part that I noticed when you're leveling in, like, the front, which you don't ever want to try to level in the front. You want those to be flat, ideally, but sometimes it doesn't work out that way. So one of the legs in the front had to go up a lot. That's kind of like – I think the higher you go, that piece of metal becomes thinner, and it might make it a little more wobbly. So what I had to do is I had – I think they used to be called pin footies. I'm actually looking at it now on Pinball. Oh, yeah. They're called happy feet. So I was able to put one of those up to jack it up on my game, and then I didn't have to have, like, one of the legs being, like, you know, like it's super, like, long, right? Like it's kind of hanging by a thread, right? The longer you have that, the more pressure maybe you're putting on this leveler aspect of it, like this metal. So, yeah, maybe. But I think the better way to do this if not 3D printed is to, like, the happy feet are silicone leg leveler cups. Like, the silicone's going to hold up fine. The 3D printer, you can either, like, if you have a 3D printer, you can do it yourself and do it cheaper. Or, again, like, I don't know. I wouldn't feel comfortable putting my pinball machines on a 3D printer thing, especially as you move a game around. So it's not the worst mod I've seen. I think it's a little bit of a struggle is all I'm saying. But it's not totally worthless. I think that he'd be better off doing it silicone. I'd be much more amenable to kind of that approach. I think that could work better. And then also silicone will have the added benefit of not, like, sliding on the floor, so it's like doing a dual purpose, right? A lot of times you use, like, these silicone leveler cups or pin floaties. If you're in a location where it's too easy to slide a game and you don't want the game sliding and crashing into another game, I don't know if that's the case with his product, if it's just kind of 3D printed plastic on the bottom. Yeah, so the one thing that I thought was nice is that it does actually have a silicone thing that locks on the bottom of it, so that's nicely done. So that's good. Yeah, and it's kind of molded in, so it kind of locks in, so it's not going to pop out, hopefully. But yeah, so you can kind of see it there where the black part is. That's the silicone, and then it kind of locks into the 3D printed part. So that was well done. So it'll keep it from sliding around. But also it's like, is that putting more pressure on this 3D printed part? Would it be better if it slid versus like potentially cracking? I don't know enough about 3D printing and where the weak points are. Yeah, exactly. So, again, it just seems obvious that a better – I know he probably doesn't have access to this and he's trying to do what he can with his 3D printer, but it seems silicone – I think maybe there is a market, right? People respond to this, there's a market, but just the happy feet people should just copy what he's doing, silicone, and then I would say just grab the silicone version easily. I think it's almost worth having it. If the Happy Feet people did this on Pinball Life and had the different sizes like this guy's going for, I'd almost buy a couple just to have it in those rare circumstances where I just need that. Not the worst thing. I think that's kind of like the first attempt. It just needs to be improved. It's a small use case. I've never really had this problem. It struck me as solving a problem that didn't exist, but there's apparently a tiny little problem. I don't think he's going to sell a ton of these. He'll sell some. Is my prediction, but well, there you go. That's pinball. If you've got a 3D printer, you're going to come up with products for pinball machines and you're going to call them pin something. Those are the requirements. I'm getting excited. We've got a cheater post coming up, huh? Oh, yeah. I don't know how I missed this one. So this is... Somebody bumped this thread back up on Pinside, and it's from 10 months ago. It says, have save post envy playing non-FF game? Try the DMCS save diverter. Oh, dear God, I hate it already. Okay. After releasing my DMCS save post for Foo Fighters Pro, I was considering ways to improve on it. I imagine that a diverting mechanism, white work wetter, conserving more of the ball's energy than an acute deflection off of a post, and feed the right flipper more consistently. The prototype I developed was this concept. Additionally, it didn't require a hole in the play field, so it's easier to install in any game. It used to be games that used to do a physical kickback for the left out lane save. I was wondering what games had that last. I know Star Trek Premium did. It seems to be a cost-cutting measure. that is just a virtual save these days, but it's more fun and interactive to control a mech to save the ball yourself. So I decided I'd offer the EMCS save diverter mod for any game. Okay, so if you aren't familiar with the Foo Fighters DMCS save pose mod, basically there's a time gauge on the left that shows time earned for activating the save pose slash diverter. You can choose what switch to use to earn time or a combination of switches. Then when the ball drains at the left out lane, you can hit the left slipper button to activate the save diverter and use your time. For more details, you can see the Foo Fighters thread. Below is some footage of it I installed in my Godzilla machine. Here it is configured to the building switch to earn a unit of time. Other configurations are possible. I also tried using the defense barrier stand-up similar to the Foo Fighters Rio stand-up. So here we go. We're going to see it in action. maybe he kind of docks around here for a little bit before you actually see it you gotta put it in the online there you go oh look yep it's a cheater post let's run that back so it's just like adding the foo fighters cheater post well it was designed into a foo fighter so it's not a cheater post on foo fighters it's like a kickback kind of right just go to the point where he's blatantly cheating there you go Nope, because this is like right after that. There you go. Whoop. Yeah. Oh, my God. Come on, guys. Just get better at pinball. You know, just like, what the hell? Yeah. There you go. Oh, you want to know the price? $260. $260. Dude, be a cheater. $260. This didn't happen. pre-COVID this was not a thing, pre-pandemic, people have lost their minds after the pandemic. And this is an example in pinball. The onslaught of cheating in pinball and saying, I can do a better design than Keith Elwin, it's an epidemic. Yeah, what's going on, people? Shut it down. The only good thing I'll say is that there's pretty much been crickets in this thread. It's not like the ramp on 007, the G-Ramp, where people went bonkers and they love it. Nobody wants this. So kudos to the pinball community. You're doing the right thing. You don't need this in your game. Just play the game as it's designed. It's fine. Or if you don't like the game the way it's designed, don't own the game. It's really not that hard. Do what you want with your game, but we're going to call you a cheater if you do this. Everyone's going to think you're a cheater. Because what you're going to do is you're going to put this in your game, and then you're going to get an I score, and then you're going to go on Pinside and post about how great your high score is and not tell everybody that you have this in your machine. Everybody, if anybody who's a friend of this person or a friend of a cheater, needs to let them know they're a cheater. Because I thinking I was meditating this morning on that breakdancer from Australia I wish I had that video queued up I would play it right now Yeah I spent about 10 minutes deep dive into this And you know how do we get to this point where this woman thinks she can breakdance at the Olympics And here's what happens. They told her she had people in her life that told her she could do it. Okay. Like her coach told us, her coach was like, oh, stop bullying her. She cried in 2018 when she thought this was a man-dominated sport. You guys are being mean to her. She cried in her room all day. Like, yeah, because she sucks. Stop lying to her. She's, like, clearly delusional. Yeah, there's plenty of excellent female breakers. You know what I mean? Like, you just don't have it. It's not a male-female thing. But how you got there is people in her life are like, no, you're good. You're really good. You can be in the Olympics one day. Right? And now this poor woman is, like, the laughingstock of the world. but that's how you get there. That's like imagine if there's pinball in the Olympics and us bros all told Jay Fairbrother that he's really good at pinball, you know, despite missing the shots left and right. Like if you're like, no, no, you're really good. You should be on the Olympic team for pinball, Jay. And Jay's like, really? Okay. And then he goes out there and he bricks the World Cup soccer scoop like 13 times in a row, leaving the commentators speechless and everybody laughing at him the next day. It's just that little bit of telling Jay he's no good and reminding him constantly on the bro stream, he'll never think. He would say to us, like, I cannot beat the Olympics. You're right. That's what good friendship is. That's my story. There you go. Lessons on the bro show on Brody Even Talk Pinball. Okay. There you go. This is a rant over. Somewhere ahead, the more you know. Oh, yeah, here it is. There you go. I haven't used the soundboard in a while, so we're breaking out the soundboard today. All right. So there you go. Let's get into some game room, and I'm going to lump in game room and location and tournament updates because we've done a lot of going out and playing in tournaments. I'm going to take a bathroom break. Okay. I did kind of want you to hear my fun with Pinball Brothers and Alien, though. Let's do that one right now, then. So I went and I bought an Alien. As you all know, I've talked about it on the show before. and after I got my Alien I was like let's look at what Pinball Brothers has on their website for mods and stuff and I ordered the Leor Art of Pinball screen surround which looks really cool and I also, I kind of like the new Ellen Ripley translates so I ordered one of those and my buddy Dave he's got one too so I ordered two of each and so here's what happened, settle in I'm going to tell you the tale of of my orders from Pinball Brothers. I ordered two Translates on March 5th and then we were like, oh, we should get these LCD screen mods too. So I ordered them. I did two separate orders, which actually ended up being a good thing. A month later, I had not received either order, so I sent a follow-up email asking if they had shipped yet. I was told that the Translates were still en route, but that I had quote-unquote impeccable timing and that the two mini LCD screen mods were on the way and they sent me a tracking number. And then two days later, I got those. So I was like, cool, got those. I'm sure they, speaking of blowing smoke up my ass, I'm sure they were just like, oh, shit, we never shipped these out. And then they did that and gave me my tracking number on that. So then I sent him a second email that day on April 9th asking for an ETA IOM when the translates might ship. And I was told, quote, hopefully they will arrive by the end of this week and will be on the way next week. So they were hoping to receive the Translates by the end of that same week and would be shipping them out to me the following week. So I wait another month, and on a May 9th, I asked for a status update on the Translates. And I was told, quote, they were shipped on top of the last batch of games that I received, but unfortunately they disappeared when the games arrived. Okay, so a big stack of missing Translates somewhere. Okay, he said he hoped that the next batch would arrive in less than a week. So I wait another month. On June 4th, I asked for another update. He said they had a shipment arrive and that he'd look through it that week and let me know if the translates were there. So 16 days later, a little over two weeks later, I hadn't received an update, so I asked if they had shipped. And it said that if not, I'd like to cancel the order and get a refund. I got no reply and followed up four days later. I didn't receive another reply to that email and haven't received any more emails from them since. So a week later, I filed a PayPal claim and received no response from Pinball Brothers. So on July 8th, I escalated it to a claim. Pinball Brothers didn't respond to the claim. At any point, so PayPal closed the case in my favor, and we got our $328 back. And this was all considering that they had these Translate shipping as of November slash December 2023. and they're readily available to purchase on their website. So that was part one. Part one, okay, that's ridiculous. It should not have happened. At least I got my money back. So Dave is like, he still kind of wanted them, and he was looking at trading somebody his standard version translate for an Alan Ripley translate, and he emailed them asking if they had the standard versions in stock so he could replace his standard version. And instead, he was told that, let's see, he says, I created a support ticket to see if the standard version translates were available to purchase. I was going to potentially trade my standard version translate for the loader battle version. I wanted to see if I could get a standard version down the road if I changed my mind. In our ticket conversation, I asked them what the queue was for the loader version, and they told me they were available to ship right away. They generated an invoice for our translates, and he paid via PayPal and shipped right away. package went from Italy to France to Belgium and finally came to Nashville and then on to Buffalo all within the span of 12 days I guess that the bottom line is if you need something from Pinball Brothers order it from Italy instead of ordering it from Pennsylvania and it'll get here in 12 days instead of never getting here it's ridiculous is what it is to me these are signs of a company that's not well-managed and well-run that possibly has issue going on because they're running – they had a decent hit with Alien, and since they've done Queen, which had potential and kind of fell flat, and now they're doing ABBA, which from all I can tell is not selling very well, and maybe this is the sign of troubled waters ahead. What do you think, Nick? Yeah. Agreed. Yes. Oh, Pinball Brothers messed up something, you're telling me, Kevin? Yeah, it's hard to believe. I didn't see that coming. I did not see that coming whatsoever. I did not have that on my radar. No, weird. It's another boutique pinball company having issues. But I wanted to say, like you said, I want these guys to succeed. I want to have it be a hit because when my alien breaks, I need parts. I need it to work. I want a lot of things in life, Kevin, but I want to live in the world of reality. That's my goal. What is reality? How do I understand what reality is? How close to reality am I living? Yeah, that's a better want in life. That's good. All right. So I'm going to talk about Pinball Long Island. All right. So, yeah, so it's been like a month and a half since we did our podcast. And part of that time I've spent, you know, summertime or going on vacation and stuff, we went to New York City. I got to see the Yankees play and blow it in the bottom of the ninth. So that was great. But we had really good seats. we also were doing college visits with my son and stuff like that and one of the schools he's considering is out on Long Island and we went out and did his thing there and then by the magic of social media tracking you wherever you go I got fed an ad for a place called Pinball Long Island that was you know like 10 minutes away from where our hotel was so I was like we had time the one night I was like let's go play some pinball let's check this place out it looks pretty cool right so we went there and let me pull up some photos here from Yelp. And so I think this video actually does a pretty good job showing off the place. It's basically just a massive room full of 100 pinball machines lining up the two walls. Narrow storefront but deep. There you go. That's a pretty good picture. And so we stepped in. Logan was excited because they had Scooby-Doo, and he hadn't played that yet. And we stepped up and played Scooby-Doo, and guess what? It wasn't working, which was like, wow, a spooky machine not working, right, especially on location. How unexpected. It was weird because it would plunge the ball, and you would get one full strength flip, and then after that you would get, like, these tiny little baby flips, and then you would drain and die. Um, but then we went to play something else. I remember playing, we played a Tron and, or no, it was Avatar. We played Avatar and Avatar. None of the insert lights worked. So that was super great. Uh, what else? Um, there was like four or five other machines we played. All of them had issues, unfortunately. So all was a solid collection of machines and they had some in the back room. they had like EMs and classics and stuff like that. Man, it was disappointing to go and play. It's like I paid $15 to go in here, $15 or $20, and nothing worked. Although we played CSI at the very end, and that one played great. So if you want to play CSI, go to Pinball Long Island and enjoy yourself in CSI. Otherwise, it's kind of like whatever. There's this QBD that didn't work. So sad. so would not recommend that place unfortunately the other place we went was do I have the pictures here? yeah I played in Pinburg so shout out to everybody who I saw at Pinburg got to hang out with Joe Cherubino he and I drove down we went to the Pirates game and then we met up with El Rocco and a whole bunch of cool people Bookie and Chris Stevens. It was awesome. These are some of the pictures from Gene Wong, Orange Photography. He took mostly photos of the women's tournament because Joe Cervino was the main photographer for Pembroke, but he's got some general photos in here of Pembroke to kind of give you a feel for what it was like. It was an interesting spot. So you can kind of tell from this photo, But downstairs was a movie theater. And upstairs in this mezzanine area, they normally have an e-sports facility. But they took it over for Pemberg. And they normally have, like, a row of pinball machines up there. And the rest is computers and gaming consoles and things like that. But they cleared all that out, made it all pinball machines. And, man, it was super fun. It felt like Pemberg as soon as we kind of like that first day. So I got there Wednesday and Wednesday night there was a pre-tournament, a three strikes tournament, which I did. Okay. Oh, there you can see there's, this is like the one photo of me that Gene's got. It's like, there's the back of my head. There's Joe, there's Ian Ian Harrower, Gamma Goat. And, uh, and that's where I go. So that was us chatting it up between one of the rounds. Um, yeah. And there's Joe up on a ladder taking pictures. He got the big group photo. Uh, but it was super fun. And the space was cool. Um, the hosts were really good. They kept bringing us free movie theater popcorn, which you can argue with that. And the food, they had specials going, so it wasn't insanely priced, as you might expect for movie theater concessions. And, yeah, you had asked me at one point, what would you rate the tournament out of 10? And I said I would give it a 7 out of 10, mostly because I was not able to go with my friends as much because the scale of it had been scaled back, right? Like, it was super hard to get in. It was, like, I think 144 players. And part of what makes Pinberg fun is that it feels like a big pinball summer camp. Like, we used to take a van out and get all the bros from Buffalo, and we would go down and we'd share a room together. And that was part of the appeal for this tournament for me, right? At some point, Rob would have to apologize to Jay. Yeah, exactly. For braiding him too much. Yeah, we would kick somebody out of our group chat because they were being too obnoxious. All that fun stuff. Nick would play VR in the van on the way down. These are just the things that happened at Pinburgh. But, yeah, it was fun. The tournament was run great. A lot of the same folks who used to run the tournament before. How does it smell there? It smelled fine. It was a nice wide open area. Plenty of opportunity for air to circulate. I mean, there were still smelly people there. I'm not going to lie. But, you know, it was not a super confined space. Yeah, anything else Pinberg-wise? You know, the games were running well. The tournament ran well. I was just super, super grateful to be back. And I told Elizabeth, I said, every time I see you, I'm going to say thank you because I'm so glad you guys brought this back. And from what I've heard and from what I've talked to people there, the plan is that they're going to build it back up from this. This was just like, let's see if we can do it again. And they do want to scale it up. So it feels like this spot is like a one and done, and they're going to look for a bigger location in the future. So hopefully, you know, we can get back to at least close to what it was in the past. So thank you to everybody who ran Pemberg. I know it's a huge undertaking. I personally really appreciate it, and I had a great time. So hopefully we can do it all again next year. That's my thought. Yeah, let's get everybody back. Okay. Oh, and we wanted to talk about Pinshed. Pinshed, we had another local tournament just yesterday. And I'll show off the video that Dave Souza did. He ran this event. Shout out to Christy and Scott who hosted it at their spot. They have a shed full of pinball machines, including this amazing hard body that you're seeing right there. But, yeah, mostly like ass-kicker old classics, and there's also a Halloween. So it made for a super fun day. The Carl Weathers was really nice. We got to hang out outside. They had awesome snacks and pizza and, like, all sorts of good stuff. So this was, like, super chill, summer tournament, enjoying the Carl Weathers outside in Buffalo while also playing some good kick-ass old EMs and solid states. And shout-out to Patrick for taking first place in the A Division. Nice work, Patrick. Yeah. What are your thoughts on the pin shed? It was a lot of fun. it's nice to do a local tournament in the summertime, and good on them for not running a 12-hour tournament. That's huge. It's a sweet spot of fun. And I also think, speaking of a sweet spot of fun, it's hard to realize I like small to mid-sized tournaments the best. Because when you have tournaments with the best players, I mean, it usually takes long. I mean, Pipper is always fun, but sometimes they bastardize the machine so much that it's not even fun, right? because they've got to account for, like, oh, this guy's number five in the world, so we've got to make it where we're going to not even have any posts in the game. You don't have to do this in the smaller mid-sized tournaments, and you can still have a fast-flowing, fun tournament that moves on time and is fair. So, yeah, I'm a huge fan of that. That's my sweet spot these days in terms of having fun at tournaments. With that said, I hope to go to Pinburgh next year. Yeah. Well, the nice thing about Pinburgh is it's got the division system, right? So, like, you play everybody on day one, and then day two you play with your people. so you don't have to worry about battling it out against the top ten players in the world. And it's also run on time. Like, you know your schedule. You get plenty of breaks. That's part of the appeal of that tournament, right? No, I'm talking about the – I don't want to get into this, but making games too hard. Some of the things you have to do to the game that, you know, ridiculous tilts or just flat-out removing posts, right? Like, it gets to a level of almost absurdity sometimes. I was like, we saw some of that at the Pembroke tournament. Yeah. At Pembroke, with Labyrinth in particular, they made that game super hard, which was like, sure, you need to make it hard otherwise because you've got to keep to the schedule, and they plan all that out, and they do a great job of that. But it's also like Barrels of Fun was trying to showcase this game, and if it's playing brutal and showing that way on the streams, then I don't know if that's really a great showcase for that game. Because it is fun. I enjoy playing James's when we go out there. But, yeah, it's like you end up playing in this small little tiny portion of the pinball machine. Like, okay, what can I do? Maybe I can get a multiball going. There's this one mode that's a multiball, so I want to do that to get the points up, and then maybe I can survive long enough to win. So, yeah, I agree. But I actually felt most of the Pinbird games were set up fairly. Some of them, yes, were stupid hard. But the general consensus was that, like, you could play him, which was good. Yeah, and to be totally fair, I mean, look, it's not easy to get it right. Like, it's hard, but it's even going to be worse when you're playing in a big tournament and, like, the best players are there than, like, it gets to a level where it's not fun. Yeah, and you have to be there all night. You can definitely devolve into that. Yeah, you have to be there all night, yeah. Yeah, so that's – hence, again, I think I found my sweet spot in life. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Let's go through some Nick Lane gamer updates. Is Pulp Fiction a baby game? So we kind of got to the bottom of this in the last month. Yeah, it's an interesting thing. So if you haven't seen that portion of the discussion, you might be a little bit lost. I won't spend really much time recapping because we've got to get going here. But Pulp Fiction is not a baby game. Okay, I want to answer that. It's not. So here's what happened. I beat Pulp Fiction on location in Vegas, right? And then I was surprised. Like, I was having a great game. Don't get me wrong. I was keeping the ball alive and following through it. I posted on Pinside, and I was just like, hey, this is like my, you know, third time playing this game on this location. I've probably played the game less than ten times. Is it that easy? I beat it, and people went nuts and attacked me. Right? Like, Josh was all over me. Everybody in the thread was all over me. And, like, it was a legit question because I didn't own the game at that time, and I was waiting to buy the game. I was confused by the scenario. So there was a little controversy we talked about on the last podcast. And thankfully, the owner of the games in this Vegas location, I can't remember what it is right now. I apologize. But he heard it or somebody told him about the podcast. And he went in and he verified my score. He's like, I did get to buy an intervention. So I did beat the game. he posted it on that thread. Josh was like, congrats, and all that. And then like an hour or two hours later, he's like, oh, I looked at the settings and I had that game in my house and I had it on easy and I forgot to change it back after I moved it to location. So, yes, I beat it. However, I beat it on easy, which I don't really consider beating it. And, yes, I was right that I knew something didn't add up. So I feel like everybody's kind of happy in that situation, right? Like the integrity of the game is there. I wasn't lying or bullshitting you. The game wasn't broken. I legit got through it, but it was uneasy, and I don't count that. So I'm happy as an owner because I don't want to – I've not technically beaten the game on the regular settings yet. So I'm really happy with it. I can't wait to do a review of this game. I think this game might be my favorite game of all time right now. I absolutely love it. It's a work of art. if you like Pulp Fiction and you like pinball, man, go out and buy this game they did such a good job, I think the rules are excellent on it it's the right level of challenge, we'll talk about that more next time yeah, I think this is going to be one of those games that there's going to be a lot of them around now, because they sold really well and I think everybody who really wants their LE also probably went and bought the standard edition because they get impatient, and when they get their LEs they're going to sell their standard editions and they're going to be cheap. That's my long-term plan for this game. Yeah, buy it. Great game. Okay. So Pulp Fiction Impressions, I think we've got to move on. I just said go buy the game. We'll review it. Hopefully next time. That's the goal. We've got to do a bro show on it, Kevin. I don't know when the hell that's the next bro show we do. We'll be on Pulp Fiction at my house. Some other things I did, just a shout-out to Ocelot Brewing, which I mentioned early in the show. So it's no stranger that I've been traveling a lot. As a matter of fact, I actually saw RLM when I was in an airport last month. I live in airports now. But on one of my travels, I was down in Nashville, and I got to take some time off, and I played in an event down there at a pinball bar called No Quarter, which is owned by Seth. I was talking to him a little bit. Great guy. I really like what he's doing. This pinball bar is awesome. Go check it out. Absolutely loved it. Killer jukebox. pinball machines all over, great variety of machines, great people playing in the tournament, had a blast. It was run by Sarah Yoder, I think is how you say her name. She runs the women's pinball, but they had kind of an open event for everybody. It was like 55-plus people playing there. At one point, after half of the rounds at eight rounds, there was 16 rounds, it was a long day, but I wasn't doing anything else, so I was happy. I actually looked up at the screen, and at the break I noticed I was in second, and then I fucked with my head, and I did manage to get to the playoffs in the top 16 and ended up finishing 11th. I was exhausted going into it because I was working conference all week that I was down there. But, again, one of my favorite things these days is when I am traveling, just to go and play pinball at different places, especially if I can do a pinball tournament and meet people. And then the only person I met was Eric Klotz. And Eric, nice guy, was talking to me. He was one of four people that worked on this custom saw machine. And I'm not, like, huge into pin brews or whatever, but it was very impressive. Like, if you didn't know anybody and you saw that game, it looks so well done that you would think that pinball manufacturer, like, it was a commercial release. They've won some awards for it. They're going to – they had it there. Again, very impressed with it. They're going to have it at Pinball Expo, I believe. So check out the saw machine. Just very well done. It's amazing they spent a year doing that. and that game looks like it's in better presentation shape than John Wick. So that's a praise for them and a condemnation to Stern. Quite impressive. What game is that based on? So, yeah, it's funny. Is it a re-theme or is it from ground up? It's a re-theme. It messed with my head because it looked like it was in a Stern cabinet, which it turns out it wasn't in a Stern cabinet, but it had, like, the Stern LED setup and everything. So I was like, what Stern game did they re-theme? I'm looking at it. I was like, I know this design. I know this pinball machine. Turns out it was Whirlwind. Oh, okay. But being in, like, what looked like a Stern cabinet and, like, a modern LCD and everything, I was thinking, what Stern game is this? And it turns out it was even in a Williams cabinet. I don't know. It was very, very well done. Very impressive. It might be the best. I've not spent a lot of time with homeroom games, but this might be the best homeroom game I've ever seen. Nice. All right, and then last but not least, I wanted to give an update on the co-op that we're going to be opening up. I think this should be by the end of the year, maybe even November. We're finally there. The place is going to be painted at the end of the month. A drywall is up. Like, it's happening, as the meme goes. So this is a call to action. If I haven't talked to you about the co-op in Buffalo and you're interested in joining a member, nothing is set in stone. I just want to give some basic parameters. We're probably going to limit it to something like 25 people. It's going to be a private club. It's going to be a nonprofit private club, which means limited membership. We're going to only be selling annual memberships to it. Memberships are going to be more than $1,000 a year. If you're in the Buffalo area and you're interested in learning more or possibly joining as a member right when we open up, reach out to me. I don't have an address yet. The co-op will have its own website, have its own address and all that. But in light of that, reach out to me at buffalopinball at gmail.com. I'm happy to hop on a phone conversation with you or keep you on the list so I can let you know more about it as we go on. I'm very, very, very pumped and excited for this. We'll release more video on it. But once we're ready to go, I'll share that with everybody on the stream and drive membership. I think it's going to be something special. I couldn't be more excited. This is like just a huge passion project right now. So, yeah, reach out to me. Hit me up. Let me know if you're interested, and I can talk more on a one-on-one basis. Let me know also where you're located because I don't want somebody from Florida reaching out and wasting my time talking to that person. So really kind of people who realistically want to be a member and I have not talked to already. Yeah, this is not your chance to get, like, one-on-one quality time with Nick. It is not. It is not. I mean, it will be if you're legit, but. Yeah, yeah. Awesome. All right, that's it. It's time for our review of Jaws, and we have a little intro for that, so let's go with that. Let's go. Let's go. I am okay. He's like the boy. All right, it's time to talk about Jaws, released by Stern Pinball just this year, 2024. If you're listening in the future, it is 2024 when we're talking about this. Game design by Keith Elwin. Mechanics by Harrison Drake. Software by Rick Nagel. artwork by Michael Barnard, and sound by Jerry Thompson. Pricing at launch is $7,000 on the Pro, $9,700 for the Premium, or $13,000 for the LE. Nick, I'll let you take the – you're an owner of this game, so why don't you kick it off with rules, and I'll chime in where it makes sense. Sure. So backstory on this before I get into the rules is I never even saw the movie Jaws, before getting this game. It wasn't on my radar. I saw the video of it when Keith was playing through it when the game was announced. It just kind of moved on. I watched it for five minutes and did not have any intention of getting this game. Ended up playing it at Pin Brew, and after just one or two games was like, I love how this game shoots. I think I need to own it. Played it more and then immediately placed an order with Zach through Flip N Out Pinball, ladies and gentlemen, FlippinOutPinball.com. So, yeah, to me that's a testament of that it's a good pinball machine, right, maybe even great. Rules-wise, it's got the team that Keith Ellman has been working with, I think, maybe since his first game. And obviously, so you know it's going to be a high-quality game in terms of rules, plenty to do there, packed with plenty of things. It's a mode-based game. Five or six modes. You hit the boat, start modes, play through the modes. It's got some other things that you need to do to get through the game, such as battling sharks. So I don't know if you want to call that a mode or not, but the way you start that is similar to Led Zeppelin if you played that game, where it's like you hit, you know, five, like 80 spinners, you hit the chum bucket five times with the bow, and then you'll start that multiball and battle the shark. That's, you know, basic high level. You can go and watch us talk about the rules more in depth on our channel. where we streamed it two months ago. But plenty to do in the game. Plenty of strategy, I guess, in terms of how you approach it. It's got some cool things like getting the shark fin to come up and rolling over a number of switches to hit the shark fin, and you've got multiplied points. It got collecting gear You can sell the gear for points or keep it which will give you perks It got Machete which is a shot multiplier sort of like a little maybe more basic version than the one in Walking Dead Yeah, I like the rules a lot. The only thing that I don't like in the rules, and I should mention right now as we review this, the final wizard mode is not in the game yet, which is, again, eight months into the game. It's just very frustrating that these games aren't done. I'm just getting more and more frustrating as time goes on with this, but I'm not worried about it. It just kind of pisses me off. But one thing I don't like in rules, and this applies to any machine that has this, I'm sick of victory laps. After you, like, beat a strike mode, you get to do victory laps. And the thing about victory laps is that usually the points involved in a victory lap is immaterial to kind of your final score. The only way I can see it making a difference is if you're playing in a tournament and getting a million, two million points here matters, but really just slows down the progress of the game, and it makes these games longer than they need to be. So I am anti-victory laps. This game has at least one or two occasion of victory laps. It also has a thing in pinball which I don't like at all that they do a lot in, like, Godzilla, and this is what this rule design team does, and I mean other people do it as well, is they have, like, this long ball save where you can kind of play for a couple minutes sometimes, it feels like. It's not like a normal 30-second multiball save, which I have no contention with. It's like you can't lose because you get to, like, a mini Wizard Mode, and they let you play for a long time. That's fine. But to me, it's just like these games are just too long these days, and they go on too long, and I personally don't like it. So that's the negative in rules. Stop making these games longer than they need to be. I want to progress through the game. I want to play the game and then move on. But other than that, you know, again, the rule design team is great. They could just change that around. that'd be fantastic. That's it for rules for me. Okay. Yeah. I will ditto that on that one. No, no. I mean, I like the basic structure of the game. It's fun to play. I think, I think the rules are interesting and it's got cool stuff like, like the night swim mode and stuff like that. I'm sure we'll talk about that when it comes to lighting. So it's got some cool moments and stuff in there too, which I appreciate. All right. All right. This was, wasn't the Michael Barnard's first game, or was he the one that did Rush 2? Oh, I don't know. I'm not sure. The art style seems way different to me, but I like the art in this game. What can I say about art? I don't know if you can pin down other than I don't like when things are too busy, and I think this game does a really good job of a lot of it's blue and a lot of it's kind of like the water, which helps give it that world under a glass feel, and I think it's well done. The characters from the movie are well drawn. They don't have kind of like shot lines per se, but it's also you can see the shots easily. So the art is good and functional is all it needs for me to say I enjoy the art. And when things are blue in a pinball machine, that's one of my favorite colors, so I'm biased there. The back glass art on the Pro and the LE is the iconic Jaws kind of poster, which you can't go wrong there. The Premium has its own design, and I really like it. Again, I don't think you could go wrong either way. whether it's the pro and LE or the premium art. But the back glass on it is kind of like the action scene at the end. It reminds me, it gives me vibes of if this game was designed by artists from Williams in the 90s, the back glass, so I think it does a really good job. The cabinet, I don't like the art as much on the side of the cabinet. Front's good, side's not great. But other than that, yeah, I think a solid art. It's a good-looking machine. Yeah, we should clarify. You own the premium of this, so that's the one we're talking about. I do own the premium, yes. We're talking about premium, which is the same design layout as the LE, except for obviously the art. It is the same artist as Rush, by the way. I think this is a much better art than Rush. I don't love the art on Rush, but not bad. Yeah, I agree. I like this a lot. I like getting new artists' take on pinball art, and I think this kind of blends a good – It's not, like, super photorealistic, but it's also not super comic-looking. Like, you get out of a lot of Zombie Yeti games. So I like the overall look and feel of this game. You don't have to look like water. It looks like water. It's good. World in a glass, right? Not too busy, but plenty of detail. Like, this guy is a good pinball artist, right? That's a good example of kind of, like, the overall look and feel of the game, right? Yep. It tells you what you need. You want to look at the art, and it needs to be functional. So you're like, oh, I have a sense of where the shots are and what I need to do. It communicates information is what the art does. And you want it to look good. So it's a balance. I mean, there's an art to the art. The arts are doing pinball art. And he does a fantastic job. Agreed. All right, sound. What do you think of the sound? So you've got the John Williams score. So it does a good job of conveying the sound of Jaws. It's got dialogue and clips from the movie. So, yeah, the sound gets it done. It's good. To me, there's nothing that is remarkable or, like, I really got to spend time on praising, but the sound is good. It's good. They got one of the actors to do the call-outs, right? So it's got a custom call-out. Well, Richard Richard Dreyfuss, yeah. From Richard Richard Dreyfuss. Which he doesn't sound anything like his character from the movie because he's ancient these days, but it is nice when they get it. It's fine. He does a good enough job. Not amazing, but it's nice. I'm glad when they get the actor from the movie that's on theme. I remember they posted a, like, promo clip of him recording the call-outs, and he sounded very much like he was kind of, like, running through the motions. He wasn't super into it. So, but it is, I mean, I guess it beats having an impersonator, like, just like the Walking Dead hillbilly guy doing it again or something, you know? When you compare it that way, yeah, yeah. It's not amazing, but the call-out's not amazing, but fine. They're okay. Okay. Toys. Toys. So that's one of the big differences on the premium on this game versus the pro are the toys, specifically the upper play field right in the shark. Yeah, I think this is a case of if you're thinking about pro or premium or premium and LE, I would definitely get the premium or LE. you know I was I did that debate myself when I played both at the same time and also they went with the premium happy I did because it is a good game but one thing that's really missing from the pro is that there's the shark doesn't come out of the boat and a problem with that is that obviously the shark coming out of the boat changes the shot when you're trying to hit it but it also helps indicate in the game when the shark is up and you're hitting the shark versus hitting the boat and you just don't get that. On the Pro, you get insert that says shark that flashes. Not the same thing. So it is a bash toy. It is cool, though, that it comes out of the bow, and you hit it, and it changes the shot trajectory versus hitting the captive ball on the boat. I like that. The other thing is the major difference is the upper play field. What I like about this upper play field is that it doesn't slow the game down. The ball, when you do hit the upper play field, it's quick. It's up there for a couple seconds at best. Sometimes upper playfields can really slow down the game. They just don't add a lot to it. I'm looking at you, Black Knight, sort of rage. Not a good upper play field. This is fun. It's quick. It happens. It adds to the game without subtracting from it, and I think it's definitely a net positive. Yeah. One of the things I noticed when I first played this game was that I wasn't getting to the upper play field very much. So the shot that leads to it, and you kind of see it in this photo, is like there's a little super, Keith Owen likes these quick turnaround ramps. So if you don't get a good solid shot to it, it's not going up there. And once it is up there, it's like, oh, man, I better know that's the shot that leads to it because it's going to be out of there real quick if I don't flip this flipper. So when you first play the premium or the LE, you might not, you'd be like, there's this whole play field up there, and I'm never going up to it. And I think that's why, right? It's like you got to get a good shot up there, and then once it's up there, you got to know what to do once it is up there and act quick. But I think, you know, being a game that you own, you'll figure that out pretty quick. And then it has the advantage, like you said, of not being a, like, slog once you're up there. Like, oh, just get me back down to the lower play field. Exactly. This is, to me, this is a perfect execution on the upper play field. And we'll talk about the gameplay to your point of getting it up there. I think that there's some issues with that and some criticism. But the other toy on that is the shark fin that pops up on that Chum plastic on the right-hand side. I like that. I like when things move on. Pinball machines like the buck on Big Buck Hunter, the crane on Batman, all that stuff. It's fun. It's a moving target. Love it. Can't go wrong with it. So that's on the Pro, and it's on the Premium. Yeah, I dig it. I think it's a fun little thing to shoot at. You've had some issues with the leveling of the plastic around that, though, right? Oh, boy. We've added a brand new criteria for our reviews called quality. Okay. And this game inspired it. Okay. We're going to get that. We're factoring in quality issues now in our reviews. And also, I've also added a joy factor. Does it bring joy? We'll talk about that. Spark joy. the like, should I throw it out or not version. Okay, display and lighting. I think there's some cool stuff in both of these, but what do you think on the display and lighting? It's good. I mean, some things that it does that I like during like the night swim mode, it turns off and you can change this in the settings about how extreme it is, but it will basically almost completely turn off the lights or just really dim the lights on that mode for night swim. Very atmospheric, good call, smart integration into the theme. The chum line plastic is cool in terms of representing how much you've chummed the waters. That will turn red under the plastic, and when you're battling a shark, it turns green to represent the shark's health. So I think the lighting is certainly solid. Those are the standout moments. Other than that, it gets the job done. Yeah, what about the LCD itself? The LCD, yeah, I mean, which makes people happy. they got a lot of clips from the movie, right? That should be standard to begin with. That's what you should do. I think they learned their lesson from Jurassic Park where people then have to mod it and they get upset about it, so good job doing that. The non-movie clips, I mean, LCD artwork or presentation, nothing special, right? Nothing to write home about. They do have a video mode in the game, and I think the video mode is actually fun. It's a welcome video mode. And every time you play the game, you're not playing that video mode. So it's a welcome break, surprise, and it works well, right? It's kind of like the video mode on Fishtails or the video mode on Bram Stoker's Dracula, right, where you're shooting things and they could be on the left side of the screen, middle side or right side, and you use the flipper buttons. So that's well done. It comes with 3D glasses, so you can play the video mode in 3D mode, although I'll be honest, I can't really notice a major difference, but that's a nice touch, right? I like when pinball machines do nice things, the little polished things have fun with it. It's a nice touch in the game. Yeah, and it's a nod to the lineage of the movies, right? Because I was like, oh, Jaws in 3D was like a big thing. So if you're a Jaws fan, that connects with you, right? So it totally fits for this game. Gameplay. Thoughts on overall gameplay? I like the kind of like the flow and feel of it like we said some of the shots can be a little tricky what are your thoughts on that? On the gameplay so high level I really like the flow that's what I fell in love with first and again my kind of games that I like I do kind of like games where the shots are way back you got an open play field I dig it it's fun shots feel great like hitting the far right shot and having it come around to the flipper is very satisfying. Hitting the middle shot, a kind of quick turnaround, you can hit it from the left or right, feels very good. You've got the captive ball that you're hitting on the boat that will introduce some randomness to the game depending on how it ricochets off that. Same with the chum. The shot to the upper play field that Kevin was mentioning, like you have to hit that shot perfectly, otherwise you're going to get rejects, and that can be frustrating, right? Is it unfair? No, it's not. But it almost feels like you're doing something wrong when you're hitting it and it's not going up there. So, you know, it's less than satisfying when you're making it, but frustrating when you don't, and you also feel cheated a little bit sometimes. That's one downside. I really like the mini flipper. So the mini flipper can hit you the three drop targets on the premium or LE or stand-up targets on the pro. and there's like a little gate that you can hit it through as well. And when you hit the ball through that little gate, then it goes up these switches, and the more switches that you hit makes the shark fin more valuable when it comes down if you make contact with it. So that's called a quick shot multiplier. That's a really fun shot. And in addition to that, this game, I almost forgot about it, it's got like the flip lock. So you can cradle the ball on the mini flipper, and you get to, I think, one to per ball, or you can unlock rewards that let you do it more often. But if the button's flashing green and you're cradling the ball, during multiball, it will keep that ball cradled for you without the need to hold down the flipper for a set period of time. So, again, nice rule, inventive, a lot going on with that mini flipper. And I just really like the design of this game. this design of this game has. Like, you can call it a fan layout, but it does enough things to stand out and be unique and be interesting. And then the other thing, the shot that I really like, although we're going to get to it in quality, is that the real shot. So the real shot is the one that's close to the right orbit. It's just the left of it. There's a reel up there. It spins it around. And if your game is working correctly, when it comes out of that, it will shoot the ball over to the mini flipper. That's a very fun and satisfying shot when it works. Yeah, the one thing, you don't notice it as much on the LE and premium, but maybe we can see it from the overhead shot. So there's like this little, the far left, it kind of reminded me of Bond 60th a little bit. You shoot it up over here and then it does a quick return and comes like all the way down the left-hand side of the machine, which I don't know, for some reason I really like that shot. It's just kind of a cool, quick turnaround. It feels a little old school, like early solid state to me, which I kind of dig that he's bringing elements of some of that other stuff. You can tell, like, Keith is like, oh, I really like this from that machine. I really like that from that machine. Like the mini flipper reminds me of Roadshow, but on the other side where you can kind of trap it up like that. But then he takes it and he implements it in a new and different way. well. So it's like recognizing the things that are great and really work, but doing them in an interesting and inventive new way. Yeah, this is my favorite Keith Alvin design game. It really is. It's a lot of, every time I play it and I'm hitting the shot, shooting it, I'm having fun. Nice. Last ability, where do you see this game lasting? Do you see it being a keeper for a while? Yeah, it's definitely a keeper for a while, right? Like, it's my favorite Keith game. I like it better than Godzilla for sure. I think it's just more fun. I think the shots work better. I think it works well. Yeah, no hurry or rush to get rid of or sell this game, right? It's going to last as long as pretty much any game in my collection would. Have you gotten anywhere near where the wizard mode's not in there yet, but have you gotten close to where it is? I think that what slows down the game or the challenge of getting through it to the end is hunting all the sharks. that's pretty hard to do because you can't make progress during multiball. So I've gotten to, like, all the mini-wizard ones. Again, where the game starts – I'm sorry, I'm starting to get a migraine. This sucks. But the games start to feel the same after a while in terms of where I get. But I can only get, like, one or two sharks usually in a game. Like, getting the third or fourth one is a challenge. So I'm wondering if they're going to make that easier. Now, I'm not asking them to. I'm fine with where it is and having a monster game, right, and beating it. So it's good where the rules are right now, but that's where it kind of gets into its log, and I can see that's where you're kind of like one of the last things you're trying to chase and just doing that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. All right, let's talk quality, our new category here. All right, so quality, this is where I'm going to dock this game some points for sure. I'm very, very, very, very frustrated with this game. So there's a couple issues with the game. My major issue is on that chum plastic. It seems that universally everybody's having this problem to various degrees. That chum plastic is on the right side of the thing. It's a plastic in the play field, and the ball tends to skip and hop over it for maybe various reasons, right? It's not leveled perfectly. Now, the user can try to level it better, but even then, there are theories that when the ball rolls over the plastic, the plastic dips down a little bit. So then when it hits the part of the plastic that's cut for the shark fin to roll over, that it actually kind of turns into a ramp and flies after that. So it gets to be air balls galore, which sucks because when I had the game, the balls flying all over, I'm like, this is going to not only cannot not make the shot to the reel, but I'm going to break some plastics in the process. So people have attempted to fix this issue. One of the solutions was somebody, like, there's multiple solutions. People have stuck, like, rubber underneath the chum line plastic so it won't flex as much. There's a couple mods on pin side. I picked up one of the more popular ones, and I struggle to actually say that it actually made a difference. Maybe it's gotten a little bit better, but I still get air balls. I think the best solution right now is from Dr. Ben Crane. he sells this, like, chum plastic protector that sits above it. It's clear, so if you do get an airball, at least the ball's not going to fly around and, like, break plastics. That was the biggest thing for me. But that shot, despite all that, despite spending over $40 in mods, Dave Sousa did a 3D printed plastic to see if that would be a better solution. That shot is still not smooth and still kind of rattles around. The other shot on the game is also related to the reel. Even when you get it in the reel, when it exits, it's supposed to smoothly go out to that right mini flipper. It doesn't do that a lot on the game, so people have had to go in and bend the metal rail guides there to get it to work. I've spent so much time with the Chum Plastic, I haven't even attempted that fix yet. So that's next for me to try to play around with and start bending rail guides so it will feed smoothly over there. The other thing is that reel itself, I guess it was put on too tightly that even Keith was saying that it's not on correctly from the factory. So people have had to go in, loosen it, potentially lube it up. It's really frustrating, Calvin. We're not at a stranger level of spending 20 hours fixing the game, but this game is, because of these issues, it's hindered progress on the game because that's an important shot to hit. So that's usually why I have trouble progressing because that shot's not smooth and I get interrupted when I should have been able to make that shot safely. So if you want the game playing like it should, right now you're going to have to spend some time on it, which is annoying. Are all these things hard to do? I mean, not necessarily, but it is a pain in the ass. It is annoying. I don't want to take off the reel without, like, having Matt come over or somebody helping me do it because I don't want to mess it up more. It's just really disappointing. and Stern doesn't like this when I say it, but Stern, they must not care because it's leaving the factory like this. This is an important shot in the game that people are having to solve on their own. I bought my game four months after it came out and this problem still exists. They haven't corrected it. They haven't released a fix for it. They had to have known it exists and they said, we're going to ship it anyway and just pass on the problem to the customer. So I'm just really getting sick of this shit at this point in time. Very disappointing. I feel bad for the team that designs this game, and this is the way the games are getting sent out because it's not a good representation of what the game can and should be. So, yeah, I mean, like, you know, everybody seems to, like, even with all these fixes, there's still some air balls. They've, like, mitigated it, or maybe they fixed it 95%, but there should be zero air balls, period. Yeah, I mean, I was asking Carl about, like, that shot to the upper play field, and he's like, oh, I had to change the coil stops, the coil sleeves. I got fans for the game. I had to turn the strength of the flipper all the way up. I had to gap the EW. Like, it's like, Jesus Christ, guys. Let's just fucking make a game where the user doesn't have to do this. Like, it sucks, man. These things are not cheap. These are all things that can be mitigated and fixed, and yet Stern knows about it, and they send it out that way. So when I say Stern doesn't care, yes, they care about a lot of things, but clearly somebody doesn't care and somebody authorizes sending it out like this. So I'm pretty pissed off. Again, I'm waiting. Stern needs to send out a fix for the chum line. It's unacceptable that the user has to deal with this. It's unacceptable that plastics might break. After $40 spent plus, I still don't have the game playing right, and I'm going to have to spend more hours just getting it as good as I can. So it's going to hurt my rating here. Keep that with a caveat for this game, folks. All right, but does it bring you joy? That's the question, right? That's the joy factor on a scale of one to ten. Does the game ask for totality? Like, you know, when we were reviewing – I'm almost blind now with my migraine. That sucks. We were reviewing Godzilla. You know, you kind of go through all these bullet points. Art, sound, and, like, all good, everything's great. But at the end of the day, does it bring you joy playing it, right? And that's where, like, Godzilla falters. For some games who don't do all these things well, bring you joy. This game on the Joy-O-Meter is a 7 out of 10 for me. That's just on joy. Okay. It's good. There's a lot of things to write. It's not a soulless game, but am I smiling when I'm playing it and dancing around having a blast like Pulp Fiction? By the way, the frame of reference these days, Pulp Fiction is a 10 out of 10 on a joy scale. 10 out of 10. Easy. That's like the one thing for me on this game that holds it back from being as good as Godzilla because Godzilla, like, I have a blast playing it. It's just fun. It's goofy, but it's also kind of like checks the boxes of, like, you have these cool battles, but also it's got these quirky, like, you know, he's crossing his eyes when he gets the secret combos, and you got baby Godzilla in there. I did the mini wizard mode update on that, and, like, when you beat that, he just, like, takes the other kaiju and chucks it across the room. It's like that shit is awesome, and it really gives that game personality. I think Jaws is lacking a little bit in the personality department compared to a game like, you know, Pulp Fiction or even, for me, Godzilla. Yeah, personality matters in a game, right? Like, what are those magic moments where it just makes you smile? And if you're not doing that multiple times in a pinball machine, the game is not done yet or it's not going to be one of the greats to me. Totally. All right, so let's put a number on it. What do you think? So let me – I'll give the – we haven't done a review in a while, so I'll give the scale. Yeah, thank you. Zero to two is a burn it. Three to five is an expensive nightlight. Six to eight is a solid game. And nine to ten is get your wallets out. Yeah, I mean, you know, take my numerical reviews as a grain of salt. It's like you got to listen to what I say about each thing because I'm a little inconsistent. And when more games come out and I kind of grow and evolve or what I'm into at a time. Anyways, I'm babbling. I give this game an eight out of ten. Like I said, I like it better than Godzilla. I gave that game a 9 out of 5, which I think is overrated, but it gets an 8 out of 10 because it really pisses me off and the quality issues really hold it back for me. This game would be higher if that real shot worked like it should and if the upper play field shot was a little more consistent. Yep, that's exactly where when I was thinking about this game earlier, I was like this is a solid game. It feels like an 8 and that's right where it goes for me. Enjoy playing it. Well executed. rules, kind of like checks all the boxes, looks good, sounds good, has the assets you want, fun layout that's interesting but still shootable. Good theme. It's like, but it's just like not, it's not an all-time great as far as Godzilla is concerned. So, yeah, nice job Stern and team. Get that final wizard mode in there and then we'll be good to go and fix the quality issues, right? please unacceptable alright well Nick's got a migraine so let's while we do the close of the show y'all need to get in here and do the giveaway let's check out our giveaways let's see hashtag win if you haven't gotten in if you're a subscriber you get 2x entries to get our giveaway of a $50 gift card for Titan Pinball thank you very much to TitanPinball.com, where you can get your amazing pin mat, silicone rings, tools, pinballs. Not pinball machines, but actual pinballs for your pinball machines. We have 37 entries in there right now from 29 entrants. It's going up. All the hashtag wins are coming in. This only works in Twitch chat. If you're watching on YouTube, you've got to be on Twitch for the giveaways. uh yeah so uh i'll give you a couple minutes to do that while i uh tell you that uh you can go to buffalo pinball.com if you want a sweet shirt or a mug or sticker or anything like that click the merch button you can can get some some pinball merch with the buffalo pinball logo and all of our cool designs over there give us a follow on all the social media channels if you want to stay connected and learn what we're talking about. We're on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. We have a Discord. We're also on YouTube. If you missed our shows live, you can check the archives of them there. Tons and tons of years worth of streams and games, all sorts of different games, everything from Hardbody to Big Bang Bar. We've got videos on all of them on our YouTube channel, so check those all out. Email us, talkpainball at gmail.com. If you want to leave some feedback. Let us know more about, you know, you got some thoughts on things we've talked about here. TalkPinball.gmail.com is the place to do it. If you want to support the channel, you can subscribe to us on Twitch. Use your Amazon Prime every month and you'll get a free entry, a double entry to our giveaways like this one from Titan Pinball. We have a PayPal, buffalopinball.gmail.com if you want to support us that way. Or you can drop a review on your podcast platform of choice. Alright, so with that said, let's go ahead and pull our winner. We're going to draw an entrant. It's AFX! AFX, congratulations. You have been selected for the giveaway for Titan Pinball. AFX, I just need you to give it the okay and chat. Yeah, there you go. We got a woohoo. I'm going to count that as an accept. So I will send you a whisper on Twitch. We'll just need your email address and we'll get it over to Eric at Titan and he will hook you up. All right. Until next month, have a great one. When I get, hopefully this month, I'll be getting my Princess Bride. As soon as that comes in, we're going to be doing a stream of that. And I look forward to sharing that with all of you. So take care, Nick. Hope you feel better, buddy. Thanks. We'll see you guys. Thanks for tuning in. And we'll see you next time. Take care.